● 01.06.10

● Links 6/1/2010: Linux 2.6.33 3rd RC, Linux-powered Quadricopter

Posted in News Roundup at 5:05 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• I thought I’d also put this out there to the Linux community and see what they think of it. I’ve never done anything like this before so I’m not even sure if I should take on this idea, but I’d be interested in hearing what people think of it and any advice on how to make it happen.

• Remember how you’re not supposed to ask for something unless you really want it? I predicted, a few short years ago, that we would cease to bind ourselves to a particular platform or operating system. Now that the future is here, I’m looking to it with a tinge of trepidation. I’m not sure that I’m ready for what’s to come: a world without local operating systems. And one where everything is virtual. Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and will cease to have any significance to the end user. The end user will only see services or applications but not operating systems. For the end user, the operating system will not exist.

• People looking for traditional desktop operating systems can choose between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 today.

• Towards the end of the year users will be able to use cloud-based operating systems such as Google Chrome OS, or Linux, Symbian and Windows Mobile on a variety of devices.

• Before I start: this is for Linux. Specifically, it’s for Ubuntu and Debian, but it’ll probably work on other Linux distros if you know what you’re doing. With that out the way, I give you rTorrentWeb, the best BitTorrent client for Linux.

Server

• But here’s something strange: Just before Christmas IBM announced Korea’s largest credit card company, BC Card, had decided to go with an IBM System z mainframe to support its payment system, rather than alternative products from HP and Oracle. “We chose System z for its continuous operation, service quality made available through IBM’s mainframe software solutions and economic returns for the years ahead,” Jeongkyu Lee, BC Card’s Chief Information Officer, is quoted as saying.

• So it was a strange feeling this New Year’s Day to have to part with a server that has been important to me for the past four years. At 12:01 a.m. 2010, the data center operations staff of The Planet reclaimed a Linux box that I had been using to run my company’s Web site and wiki. This reclamation ended an important chapter of my life.

• The staff that takes the box off the rack will never know how it hosted a wiki that helped write more than 10 books, and that hundreds of people used the processor, memory and disk during the writing process. The people who strip this server down for parts won’t have any idea that the Web sites powered by this server took my company, Evolved Media, through several stages of evolution.

Google

• When Google noted that Chrome OS is being launched, everyone from Microsoft to Apple to Linux based OS providers took notice. It’s not because of what was being presented in terms of the OS, but the general direction Google is heading is what terrified them. Within years they can put their fingers in every aspect, moving up the chain until there is no more room for competition.

Kernel Space

• It’s been quiet due to the holidays, so -rc3 is reasonably small despite being a few days over the normal one-week mark. And most of the changes are pretty trivial, although both ext4 and reiserfs had some trouble in -rc2, hopefully all fixed now.

Applications

• The download linked from this article is for Ubuntu 9.10 32bit. Other versions can be found on the Linux download page. There are downloads for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu 9.10, 9.04, 8.10, 8.04 and 7.10, and Fedora Core 10 and 9. The source code can also be downloaded from this page for use with other versions of Linux.

• The Opera Devices SDKs are built on the same engine as the company’s flagship browsers for desktop computers and mobile phones, offering browsing capabilities and tools such as user interfaces and application environments to be deployed on TVs, set-top boxes, portable media players, tablets and mobile devices, said the firm.

• [...]

• The SDK for Linux also boasts hardware acceleration and Open IPTV Framework for the development of Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV and Open IPTV Forum clients.

Instructionals

Distributions

• With the beginning of this new year it’s time for a new release. Many people asked me whether there is a 64-Bit version, too? Now i can say: Yes, it is!

Debian Family

• Just a quick note that tomorrow (Wed 6th Jan 2010) at 7pm UTC/ 11am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, I will be starting back up with At Home With Jono Bacon: my series of videocasts about community growth and building, and sharing work and approaches with the communities that I am involved in, namely Ubuntu, Shot Of Jaq, and the Community Leadership Summit.

• FOR more than three years, I’ve been using Ubuntu, a popular distribution of Linux, on my home PC for work and play. As a long-time Windows user, I appreciated the freedom from crashes and system slowdowns that plagued my computing life before I made the switch. The notion that I would have to reinstall my operating system, so common in Windows when something went terribly awry, now seems so foreign to me as a Linux user.

• I also enjoyed not having to put up with Microsoft’s intrusive and heavy-handed licensing practices, and not worrying that some malicious piece of code would get past my anti-virus software and wreak havoc on my files.

• And that’s an important thing to remember when talking about glitches in Linux: Yes, they exist, but they can crop up in Windows, too. In Linux, they don’t cost you anything — at least in terms of money. Time is another thing … especially if you’re not accustomed to the vocabulary and grammar of Linux.

Devices/Embedded

• The top of the line Copia Ocean eReader features a 9-inch ePaper capacitive touchscreen, 768 x 1024 pixels resolution, 4-directional tilt-sensor, 3G connectivity (optional), WiFi (802.11b/g), Linux 2.6.21, 2GB internal memory, stereo speaker and 3.5mm stereo jack.

• Next up, there will be much more virtual Linux, particularly in Microsoft and Windows shops that are enjoying greater integration and support of Linux from Redmond. This — along with the growing base of enterprise Linux users leveraging virtualization and additional commercial support from Red Hat, Novell, Canonical and others — will help fuel more virtual Linux traction and growth. However, don’t expect Microsoft to talk too loudly about virtual Linux options and keep in mind we are still, even now in 2010, relatively early on in the enterprise adoption of server virtualization.

• Moving on, what better place for Linux to hide inconspicuously than in cloud computing? We’ve covered the significance of community Linux in the enterprise and also community Linux in the clouds. With more support for community software and growing desire to build private and hybrid clouds, Linux (both commercial and community) figures prominently into the equation as a basic, flexible yet scalable building block. The end result is both use of Linux to build cloud infrastructure and availability of Linux in the clouds, even though it is likely to be labeled or branded something other than ‘Linux.’

• FPGA software provider PetaLogix has just introduced its PetaLinux SDK, a new system development software product to allow designers to build, customize and employ Embedded Linux on Xilinx FPGA-based embedded processor applications.

• Introduced in conjunction with a design kit from Xilinx, the company claims that its PetaLinux SDK is the first commercially available Embedded Linux development environment specifically designed for FPGA-based embedded systems.

• The screen is detachable from the keyboard, and behind the screen you have a Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM-based processor, the Skylight Linux operating system, 512MB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage.

• I’ve been let down by my fair share of remote-control flying toys in the past, but the Avatar-chic, iPhone-controlled, Linux-based, Wi-Fi-ready, augmented reality-enhanced, dual video camera-wielding Parrot… well, you get the picture.

• AUGMENTED REALITY DRONE

• A flying UFO-like device that can be controlled by an iPhone using WiFi. The quadricopter has two cameras that can stream video.

• It was created by Parrot, a global leader in wireless devices for mobile phones. The company will make the software open source so programmers can create augmented reality games for the drone.

• The quadricopter is controlled by accelerometers and an embedded Linux platform originally designed for mobile phones, according to Parrot. The open-source platform is being made available to software developers at CES, the company said. In unveiling the AR.Drone, Parrot said that software for controlling the copter would be available on a number of platforms, not just the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Android

• So we rooted the Nexus One. Before it was out. Without a device. Neat, but many knowledgeable commentators in the Android community noted that the root was only possible due to the engineering bootloader shipped on the devices distributed by Google, and that retail devices would likely have locked bootloaders. We told them not to worry… and here’s why.

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• It’s easy too! Google WANTS you to be able to do whatever you please on your Nexus One, but they also want you to be aware of the consequences.

• Google is such a large company, and with increasingly large ambitions, that it is often hard keeping tabs on all of its activities. That’s particularly the case at the moment, when most of the tech world is understandably focussing on the imminent launch of Google’s own Android phone.

• But important as these events are, we shouldn’t overlook some of the less well-publicised, but nonetheless strategic, moves it is making elsewhere. Perhaps the best example of that can be found in the field of open spectrum.

• Google leads with the fact that this is as much about *how* people buy phones, as what that phone is. As many commentators have noted, that’s a reflection of Google’s long-term plans to break the grip that the current mobile phone companies have on this sector, but it needs to proceeds cautiously, step by step, so as not to frighten the animals – hence the very limited scope of the present announcement.

• As the tech world readies itself for the unveiling of Google’s Android-based — and much-hyped — Nexus One, MIPS Technologies Inc. this morning said it will team with a host of partners to showcase new Android-based offerings at this week’s CES. Among them are set-top boxes, a netbook and a social media center designed to enable consumers to consume and share TV content.

• MIPS Technologies is hoping Google’s Android OS can find fame and fortune outside the mobile world where Google hasn’t set its sights on making a device of its own (yet).

• MIPS Technologies has announced plans to design set-top boxes running the Android platform. Linux is already a popular embedded software option for device makers. However, building a device around Android — which is based on the Linux kernel — could enable set-top boxes to run a wide variety of extra applications.

• Android: Last year saw the launch of nearly two dozen Android-powered phones, including the Verizon Droid. In a few days, Google’s Nexus One will launch as the first Android phone which can be unlocked from any given carrier (it is launching with T-Mobile). Android is Google’s answer to the iPhone, and as it reaches critical mass across multiple carriers and handsets it is becoming increasingly attractive to developers. There are already more than 10,000 apps on Android, next year there will be even more. And other devices running on the mobile OS are launching as well.

• It’s long been argued that FLOSS advocates should be looking at the next generation of computing devices. That strategy is paying off. More than 1.4 million Google Android (that’s Linux) devices shipped in the third quarter of 2009. It’s too early for numbers in the fourth quarter, but you can bet that they’re even higher. In three months, that’s 1.4 million users adopting Linux for personal computing. Granted, still a minority next to other smartphones, but the Nexus One looks ready to give other smartphone vendors a run for their money.

• For others, the move into equipment will in time fragment the Android OS world, so that some handset makers could develop their own Linux kernel based on Android, or put a middleware layer on top of Android, while remaining compatible with Android apps.

Sub-notebooks

• And with the release of Microsoft Corp.’s streamlined Windows 7 a couple of months ago, netbook users can finally run a new version of Windows instead of the aging Windows XP. (Some netbooks ship with the free, open-source Linux operating system, but many users unwisely rule out that option.)

• Other features include Wi-Fi, webcam, and various operating systems including Windows 7 Starter, XP and Ubuntu.

Free Software/Open Source

• Hopefully, you’ll find something to learn from here, and the good news is that everything found in this post is free.

• The Beta release of the app will deliver not only tons of bug fixes, but also performance improvements, all-new features and official support for Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Karmic, according to the developers. An early access is also available to the beta, slated for launch tomorrow.

• The January issue of the Open Source Business Resource is available, with a focus on “success factors.” “The authors in this issue explore: the importance of well defined processes, the value of documentation to end users, the diverse tasks of a community manager, the value provided by participants who don’t contribute code, and how a community can assist in creating training materials. Each concentrates on a particular success factor, and as a whole, provide a fuller picture of what to look for in a successful open source project or company.”

• The recent international recognition of local developer Ken Kasina has boosted the country’s profile. Mr Kasina was presented with the Global Achievement Award for Open Source award last year for his work on open source platforms.

• Last year, local software developer CompuLynx raked in Sh400 million in software development, with a portion gained from exporting solutions.

• The company is now targeting Sh1 billion over the next year on the back of increased interest from foreign companies and countries.

• The worldwide community around OpenClinica, the rapidly growing open source clinical trial software, will gather on March 22nd, 2010 in Bethesda, Maryland (USA) for the first ever OpenClinica Global Conference.

• Participating in this panel were: Anthony Gold, Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) President, Open Solutions Alliance Joe McKendrick, Contributing Editor and Analyst, ebizQ Pierre Fricke, Director of Product Management for the SOA & Business Rules Management System products, Red Hat Debbie Moynihan, Director, FUSE Community & Marketing, Progress Software

• People seem to forget that Firefox is open source. They see it as a browser and probably don’t even contemplate it anymore. But I haven’t forgotten, and thankfully millions out there haven’t either. My experience with the Linux-based Maemo operating system on the Nokia N900 opened my eyes to open source and Linux.

• Winner: OpenOffice 3.1 — Thanks to some serious third-party and open-source community support, OpenOffice can handle almost any format you throw at it, including Office 2007. More to the point, OpenOffice can save to virtually any format it opens, and it has a top-notch native PDF output option. This versatility extends to both spreadsheets and presentations, too.

Mozilla

• Mozilla’s Firefox 3.7 looks set to take a step closer to competing with Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 in the speed stakes, according to results of a pre-release version tested by a browser enthusiast.

GNU

• Other than the open-source community’s GNU GCC, there isn’t really an alternative to the Intel compiler — and for some applications the Intel compiler is the only option.

• Mr. T loves using Photoshop at work, but it’s just too darn expensive to buy for his home computer.

• That’s why he uses GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program.

• Macraigor Systems has ported their proprietary On-Chip Debug Technology (OCDemon), GNU Tools Suite and Eclipse Ganymede/Galileo platform to the ARM Cortex-A8 processor.

Open Access

• Stan Peirce had been looking for new pursuits after a long career as an electrical engineer with Eastman Chemical Co. in Kingsport, Tenn. Then, last year, while searching the Internet, he stumbled on nearly 2,000 academic courses that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had put online. Peirce saw MIT’s offerings—its OpenCourseWare project complete with syllabuses, assignments, exams and, in many cases, audio or video lectures—as nothing short of an educational gold mine.

• We are pleased to announce the release of MapOSMatic, a set of tools to automatically generate cities’ map from OpenStreetMap data. MapOSMatic takes care of generating a labelled grid over the map, a list of street with references matching the grid as well as a nice layout of the city if its administrative boundaries are known. For now, it only supports rendering French metropolitan cities’ maps, but it will soon be extended to other parts of the world. MapOSMatic is Open Source / Free Software licensed under AGPLv3.

• OpenStreetMap Founder Steve Coast has announced that the OpenStreetMap (OSM) Project now has more than 200,000 registered users. The project, originally started in August of 2004, has become increasingly popular in recent months. The new milestone comes less than ten months after the project reached 100,000 registered users back in March of 2009. OpenStreetMap is an open source project, run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, that builds free online maps, not based on any copyright or licensed map data.

• While this is currently experimental, in the future he plans to make it easy to export data in XML/JSON as well as to create more sophisticated visual representations of the data.

• Abstract: Articles whose authors make them Open Access (OA) by self-archiving them online are cited significantly more than articles accessible only to subscribers. Some have suggested that this “OA Advantage” may not be causal but just a self-selection bias, because authors preferentially make higher-quality articles OA.

Other Openness

• “One of our hopes is that the open-source community will speed up development of the fuel cell and electrical network, as well as other key technologies,” said Hugo Spowers, a key partner in the Riversimple project and the man behind Morgan’s Lifecar fuel cell prototype.

• What commanders want and need is information regarding the local population. Because of this need, the report encourages collecting data from “open-source” channels such as civilian sources, NGOs, and other groups.

• “The Cold War notion that open-source information is ‘second class’ is a dangerous, outmoded cliché,” the document says. “Lieutenant General Samuel V. Wilson, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, captured it perfectly: ‘Ninety percent of intelligence comes from open sources. The other 10 percent, the clandestine work, is just the more dramatic. The real intelligence hero is Sherlock Holmes, not James Bond.’”

Leftovers

• But software engineering is where the rubber meets the road. Few people care whether P equals NP just for the beauty of the question. The computer field is about doing things with computers. This means writing software to solve human problems, and running that software on real machines. By the Church-Turing Thesis, all computer hardware is essentially equivalent. So while new machine architectures are cool, the real limiting challenge in computer science is the problem of creating software. We need software that can be put together in a reasonable amount of time, for a reasonable cost, that works something like its designers hoped for, and runs with few errors.

Storage

• Good things come in small packages–and when it comes to storage, the saying couldn’t be more true. No matter what size your data set is, you can find a stylish, pocketable wonder of modern miniaturization to store it and transport it.

• Seagate has upped its BlackArmor external drive interface from USB 2.0 to the faster USB 3.0.

• NVerzion, a leading provider of digital broadcasting and television station automation solutions, and Open Source Storage today announced Southern Illinois University, Carbondale station WSIU has completed installation of its new NVerzion automation package that will control 24/7 operation of the station’s three channels, unattended overnight operations, server interface and master control interface, as well as provide a complete media database and interface to the station’s existing traffic system. WSIU has also added Open Source Storage’s award-winning OSVault™ Network Archive, providing a powerful, yet economical data management appliance ensuring the station’s ability to maintain high-speed file exchange, portability, data preservation and longevity in a non-proprietary, open network environment.

Security

• A few days later the TSA, to its credit, rolled back some of the more arbitrarily punitive restrictions — in-flight entertainment systems can now be turned back on, and passengers are, at the airline’s discretion, again permitted to use the toilets during the last hour of flight.

• But while a degree of sanity may have returned to some of the rules, the TSA’s new security philosophy appears to yield significant advantage to attackers. The current approach may actually make us more vulnerable to disruption and terror now than we were before.

• An unidentified man breached airport security at Newark Airport on Sunday, walking into the secured area through the exit, prompting an evacuation of a terminal and flight delays that continued into the next day. This problem isn’t common, but it happens regularly. The result is always the same, and it’s not obvious that fixing the problem is the right solution.

• Those who do cross the Albanian border, for whatever odd reason, will probably find, besides the aforementioned stolen Mercedes, a beautiful country, filled with wide quiet beaches, rough mountains, and disarmingly friendly and helpful people.

• One of the Bush administration’s most pernicious legacies is the never-ending War on Terrorism, a perpetual state of emergency that supposedly authorizes the president to break the law, abridge civil liberties, and ignore due process, all under a cloak of secrecy. Last week former Vice President Dick Cheney accused the Obama administration of forsaking Bush’s War on Terrorism. If only it were true.

• On Christmas Day, police in the U.K. rounded up tourists taking photos of the royal family at Sandringham church and confiscated their cameras. At The Independent, Dominic Lawson’s dismay subsides to confusion: Britain’s police are “descending into obvious madness,” he writes. ” …Their explanation of their behaviour is usually much harder to understand than the errors they seek to mitigate.”

• Married couples could be arrested and charged for insulting each other under a new law in France banning ‘psychological violence’.

• Airport security is a big deal these days. But since when has reporting your income been a matter of national security?

Animals

• Director Louie Psihoyos talks about his film “The Cove,” which won the Golden Space Needle award for best documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival. The film is about a cove on the Japanese coast where for generations residents have survived by killing and processing dolphins. It opens Aug. 7 for a regular run.

• Dolphins are almost as clever as people and should be given human status, according to a zoologist at Emory University.

• Since the summer of 2003, I’ve crisscrossed the country speaking at colleges and theaters and bookstores, first with The Weather Underground documentary and, starting in March of this year, with my book, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (William Morrow, 2009). In discussions with young people, they often tell me, “Nothing anyone does can ever make a difference.”

• [...]

• Aha! Activism = self-expression; organizing = movement-building.

• Until recently, I’d rarely heard young people call themselves “organizers.” The common term for years has been “activists.” Organizing was reduced to the behind the scenes nuts-and-bolts work needed to pull off a specific event, such as a concert or demonstration.

Environment

• Saudi Arabia says it is “satisfied” with the conclusion of last month’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

• However, the country’s lead negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabban told BBC News that the UN climate process may be heading for stalemate, like world trade talks.

• This research note is an attempt to map out the range of reasons for governments’ silence on peak oil. These reasons can be seen along a continuum, from ignorance (“we don’t know”), to disbelief, to conspiratorial silence (“we know well, and have plans, but we’re not sharing them”). This post surveys some of the more common ideas regarding governments’ lack of attention to the issue, in the hope of spurring comments from readers regarding which of the scenarios is more plausible in light of available evidence.

• An Australian father and son team are going global with new power board technology designed to cut household energy use by automatically switching off electronics devices when they are not in use and eliminating “standby” power consumption.

Finance

• In early 2008, while federal investigators were busy investigating disgraced financier Robert Allen Stanford for his part in an alleged $8 billion fraudulent investment scheme, Eastern European hackers were quietly hoovering up tens of thousands customer financial records from the Bank of Antigua, an institution formerly owned by the Stanford Group.

• Asian capitalism, notably China and South Korea are competing with the US for global power. Asian global power is driven by dynamic economic growth, while the US pursues a strategy of military-driven empire building.

• One Day’s Read of the Financial Times

• Even a cursory read of a single issue of the Financial Times (December 28, 2009) illustrates the divergent strategies toward empire building. On page one, the lead article on the US is on its expanding military conflicts and its ‘war on terror’, entitled “Obama Demands Review of Terror List”. In contrast, there are two page-one articles on China, which describe China’s launching of the world’s fastest long-distance passenger train service and China’s decision to maintain its currency pegged to the US dollar as a mechanism to promote its robust export sector.

• In a twist to the island nation’s much-watched struggle to cope with its massive debt, Mr. Grimsson blocked a $5-billion (U.S.) deal to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses suffered by depositors in one of Iceland’s banks.

• Arianna Huffington has a solution: Change to a community bank. In a post written with economist Rob Johnson at The Huffington Post, she advocated that people close their accounts at the big four banks and open accounts at small community banks.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• While warning that consumers could get ripped off if they don’t shop around when buying music, an expert on saving money says that if it’s serious about winning over pirates, the music industry must wake up and embrace price competition.

• The controversial French ‘three strikes’ law has hit yet another delay – it has failed to win approval from the French data protection agency.

• The good news is that Americans spent more money at the movie theater in 2009 than the year before. The bad news is that they spent less on DVDs—a lot less.

• MP3 players given as presents have helped boost UK single sales to an all-time high in the week after Christmas.

• According to Official Charts Company figures, 4.22m singles were sold in the last week of 2009, beating the previous record of 4.03m over Christmas 2008.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayMargaret Aranyosi, Executive Director of KITE, Inc. 001 (2004)Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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